Knowing God and Man

by Herman Hoeksema

The key to understanding Reformed doctrine, and certainly the theology of Rev. Herman Hoeksema, is found in the title of the first chapter in this "God is God." This truth sets the tone for all thirteen chapters—six on God and seven on man. Each chapter on God directs the reader’s attention to a different biblical aspect of the sovereign of the God as God, as creator, as Lord, as good, as the living God, and as love. The seven chapters about man open the biblical teaching about a subject often misinterpreted today. Clear explanation is given concerning man’s covenantal relationship to God, his creation in the image of God, his fall, and his totally depraved nature. Like the chapters in part one, these also emphasize that God is God. Knowing God and Man is an excellent introduction to the author’s theology. Hoeksema’s penetrating analysis provides spiritual food for those hungering and thirsting after God’s righteousness and not their own.

152 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2006

About the author

Herman Hoeksema (1886-1965), a Dutch Reformed theologian, was born in the Netherlands and immigrated to the USA in 1904. After studying at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he began his ministerial career in the Eastern Avenue Christian Reformed Church of Grand Rapids - at that time one of the largest reformed congregations in the United States.

Hoeksema was one of the principal founders of the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC). Founded as a separate denomination of Reformed churches in 1924, the PRC stand in the tradition of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Their origin as a denomination was the doctrinal controversy over "common grace" within the Christian Reformed Church in the early 1920s, occasioned by that church's adoption of the doctrine of common grace as official church dogma. The result of the controversy was that several ministers with their congregations were put out of the Christian Reformed Church. These men then established the Protestant Reformed Churches.

The newly-formed PRC denomination established the Protestant Reformed Seminary where Hoeksema served as professor of theology for 40 years.